Track is my field: Mark Cullen's international track and field website featuring storytelling, commentary, and predictions and event analyses for the Olympics and World Championships. I am writing from the 2018 European Championships in Berlin this week. I'll be reporting from the Diamond League finals in Zurich and Brussels as well. I'm active on Facebook and Twitter: @trackerati.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

10/16/17 is
the 49th anniversary of the famous black power protest by Tommie
Smith and John Carlos on the 200m victory stand at the 1968 Mexico City
Olympics. This is my story of the 2014 dedication of the 1968 training camp at Echo
Summit, CA, as a California Historical Landmark - a story of that day, and of their times.I’ve included an addendum to
reflect recent scholarship on the role of the ‘third man
on the podium,’ Australia’s fast-closing silver medalist, Peter Norman.

The 1968 US
Men’s Olympic track and field team, arguably the greatest ever assembled, was
honored today with the recognition of the Echo Summit, CA, US Men’s Track and
Field Olympic Trials and high-altitude training site as a California Historical
Landmark.

A crowd of
several hundred gathered to celebrate the track and field legends who put their
stamp on US social, cultural, and athletic history.

Members of
the ’68 team in attendance were Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Ed Caruthers, Norm
Tate, Reynaldo Brown, Larry Young, Tracy Smith, Mel Pender, Ed Burke, Geoff
Vanderstock, and Bill Toomey. Smith and Carlos were the featured speakers.

Four world
records were set during the Olympic Trials at the 7382’ elevation of the Echo
Summit site, chosen for its nearly identical elevation to that of Olympic host
Mexico City.

The ceremony
was at the same time touching and moving, high-spirited and celebratory. It had
the look and feel of a family reunion. The eloquent remarks of the speakers
were greeted with repeated and sustained standing ovations by the knowledgeable
and enthusiastic crowd.

Bob Burns,
former Sacramento Bee reporter and
the force behind the recognition of Echo Summit, said, “Few teams mirrored the
social climate of their times as much as the ’68 Olympic track team did the
1960s.”

Jill Geer,
USATF Chief Public Affairs Officer, cited “the importance of these people not only
to sport but to society.” Geer pointed out that while the team is rightly noted
for its 12 Olympic gold medalists, 20 of its team members have been inducted
into the USATF Hall of Fame. “This team was so good that you didn’t have to win
a gold medal to make it to the Hall of Fame.”

California
state historian William Burg said that of over 1,000 California historic sites,
Echo Summit is “the only one associated with both sports and civil rights
history.”

South Lake
Tahoe Mayor Pro-Tem Brooke Laine paid tribute to Walt Little, South Lake
Tahoe’s Recreation Director in the 1950s and ‘60s, who was instrumental in
convincing Bill Bowerman, Director of the US Olympic High Altitude Training
Program, to accept the Echo Summit bid.

Little’s
sons, Walt Jr. and Bill, in a stirring memorial, revealed that their family had
lost their house as their father had used mortgage funds to help pay for
athletes’ food.

Walt Little,
Jr., said that their father was motivated “because of the Olympians and what
they stood for. Dad carved his dream of a track and field arena out of the ice,
the snow, and the trees. Echo Summit became the most beautiful track and field
arena the world has ever seen.”

John Carlos
lauded Little as “an icon in the world of athletics.”

“We are
proud to have been a small part of your success,” Little, Jr., said to the
assembled athletes. “Welcome home.”

My youth was
marked by political violence: the assassination of the President when I was 11
and of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy when I was 16. Shortly before
the 1968 Olympic Trials began, there were riots at the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago. Upon the opening of the Olympics in Mexico City,
protests there were brutally suppressed. The 1963 March on Washington was
peaceful, but by 1968 there was a growing divide in both the civil rights and
anti-Vietnam War movements over what kinds of action to take.

That
discussion was reflected in the choices made by athletes at Echo Summit. To
boycott the Olympics or not? African-American athletes were under heavy
pressure to do so. But all made the same choice: to represent their country in
Mexico City.

When Tommie
Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medal winners in the Mexico City 200m,
took the victory stand and raised their glove-covered fists in silent protest,
I was awestruck at the peaceful eloquence of their statement.

They spoke
to the whole world without uttering a single word.

The next
day, the US Olympic Committee, under threat by the IOC of having the entire US
team disqualified from the Olympics, dismissed Smith and Carlos from the team
and they were forced to leave Mexico City immediately.

Tommie Smith
and John Carlos have been united for life by their singular act as young men.
They have traversed the territory from outcasts to heroes. Their “protest on
the victory stand in Mexico City is one of the iconic images of the 1960s and
the civil rights movement,” said Burns.

After their
peaceful protest, Smith and Carlos paid a heavy personal price, and it was
common to find them denounced in the US media for what were characterized as
unpatriotic acts.

“Mr. Smith
and I, in particular,” said Carlos, “we were vilified.”

Carlos noted
the irony of the fact that he and Smith are now regarded as patriots and said,
“All the individuals on this team are
patriots… In many ways they tried to divide our team: these guys are civil
rights activists, these guys are athletes. These guys are for a boycott, these
guys are not for a boycott.”

“I’m just here to let you know now that we are
one. We have been one all along.”

Smith and
Carlos reflected on their days at Echo Summit. Both expressed gratitude and
appreciation to the US Forest Service for their support of the ‘100 Days at
Tahoe’ in 1968 as well as Friday’s ceremony.

“Look around
and you see the goodness,” Smith said to the many youth foresters who staffed
this event. “My heart is so full now.”

Smith
remembered what it was like to take the turn from Highway 50 to the track at
Echo Summit. “I hated to
see that turn because that meant I had to train against him, and to train
against John Carlos is no fun at all! You would have to run a world best just
to stay in his shadow,” said Smith.

Smith noted
the humor that came with practicing at a site that was carved out of a forest. When
Bob Seagren came down from a 17’ pole vault clearance, Smith recalled, “I
thought he had fallen out of a tree!”

To say that
they raised the bar for each other is to put it mildly. “Tommie and John had to
run awfully fast to put themselves in a position to mount a protest that will
outlast any record,” said Burns.

Carlos paid
tribute to the US athletes who watched the Olympics from home.

'I have to remember those individuals
who did not make the team… It’s just unfortunate that God put so many of us in
a cluster and we could only pick three. But it didn’t stop us in terms of who
we were as human beings... as civil libertarians... as people that were
concerned about humanity.'

Smith
reflected on his remaining time on this earth. “I hope that it’s longer than I
feel sometimes… Sometimes you get up in the morning, you head for the door -
and it never gets to you!”

Carlos
concluded by noting that “the only downfall that we had here is the fact that
we didn’t have a co-ed team. It was a shame that the women that represented
this nation did not have a chance to experience the beauty, the love, the
understanding, and bonding that we had.”

In 1968, their silent act of courage
echoed around the world; it reverberates still.

Today, it echoed among these trees,
one last time.

photo credit: pausatf.org

Peter Norman Update

Peter Norman, Australian silver medalist, also paid dearly for his courage. He wore a badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights in support of Smith and Carlos, and for this he, too, was vilified in his home country. In spite of the fact that he met the 1972 100m and 200m qualifying marks repeatedly, was the 200m defending silver medalist and the Australian 200m record holder (and still is to this day), he was not named to Australia’s 1972 Olympic team. To Australia’s eternal shame, Norman was not invited to the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

It was in 2012 that the Australian Parliament finally apologized to Norman.

Too little too late; he had died in 2006.

Smith and Carlos, lifelong friends of Norman’s, served as pallbearers at his funeral.Research credit for information about Peter Norman: Riccardo Gazzaniga.